dichotomy of christmas
by euludey
Summary: There was a metaphysicality to Christmas. There always was, whenever people collectively come together. In the aftermath of Yaldabaoth's fall, a young boy reached out for an impossibility. Please read the warnings beforehand.
1. Chapter 1

Warning: Body horror, angst, and non-explicit sexual content.

* * *

It was Christmas.

A boy and his lover held hands, fingers intertwined in a tumultuous embrace. Artificial light battling away the soothing darkness. Against the harshness of the world, came the almost naivete of their conjoining. A fatalistic juxtaposition set to repeat endlessly in a cycle.

The blinding white dyed their skin blue. Minuscule, invisible needles circled their prey. Cheeks stunned by a brusque wind. Clasped in the center of their palms, a golden chalice to share.

His lover brought up a bottle, flicked it open, and poured. The nectar completed the grail fittingly. With his other hand, fingers still tangled with the boy's, he lifted it up. This time it was the boy who did the pouring. A bittersweet tang spread through his mouth.

"You're cold," the boy said. He was correct. The fingers of his lover were terribly frigid.

"So are you," came the response.

The boy acknowledged this, and let his lover give him another sip. He tentatively swallowed, then pushed it to the other's mouth. Just as the boy had done before, his love tips the cup back of his own volition, takes a drink, and sets in that little space between them once more.

They look out at the pond. Despite it being Christmas, it was barren of any skaters upon the ice. The only thing that could be seen were the wisps prancing across its frozen surface. Surprisingly gentle, in its innocent dance.

"Was this really a good idea?" The boy asked. "It's cold and we're underage." His lover shrugged, "I don't know. But we're here now." They had come here on a whim. To them, there was no difference in being outside or being at home.

"I suppose."

"There are no skaters," the boy suddenly said. He pointed at the cold plane. "The ice is too thin this year."

"Is it?" His love asked. He looked out at the surface. It looked solid and untouched, unmovable and unbreakable. There was nary a crack or scratch that would give away it's apparent fragility.

"Yeah."

"People don't usually skate on ponds," his love said.

"Sometimes they do. I always see people on this one." The boy could clearly remember the numerous times he had passed through here on numerous Christmases, watching the couples clumsily skating across.

His love blinked, "Really? I wouldn't know."

Now it was the boy's turn to shrug, "Maybe this year's just different."

"What makes it so different?"

"I have you," He said simply. The sincerity of that statement took even the boy himself off guard. His love laughed a bit and said, "I make such a difference?"

"All difference in the world."

They picked up the drink again, liquid sloshing about as their hands jolted the chalice in their uncoordinated movement. The alcohol was barely drunk, yet already the boy was feeling warm. The edge of the unrelenting wind that had seemed so sharp was nothing short of dull now.

"What am I to do now?" He said more than asked.

"Live."

"I don't know if I can," the boy said. His life purpose moot, taken away by outside intervention and nothing of his own hand. And in a day or so, he would be unleashed as a being of his own. "My father is gone."

"Good riddance."

"I was going to end it," the boy confessed, voice barely above a whisper. The warmth was in his cheeks now, loosening his tongue. He didn't really care.

"I know."

"I'm sorry I was going to leave you behind," he said. "Back then, I could only think of revenge. I couldn't even see what was right in front of me. I was so stupid."

"So was I."

"Were you?"

"I was," his lover told him. His cheeks too were flushed. "Too preoccupied with wallowing in my own misery, I almost couldn't see yours." He turned his head towards the boy and said, "We were both so stupid then."

"And we aren't now?"

"I know you are." There's a small laugh.

"You never had to worry about me, you know," the boy said, not meeting his eyes. His fingertips trembled against the other's.

"Yeah," his love said. "But if I didn't where would we be now?" With sudden mirth, the boy quipped back, "Probably dead."

He agreed, "Probably dead."

The mirth faded as the comfortable blanket of quiet settled upon them.

His love said: "I promised you, 'If you were to die tomorrow — "

" — I'm fine with my life ending with you."

"But if you would live for me another day — "

"I would do so too'" the boy finished.

"You have me," his love repeated the words from earlier. "I make all the difference in the world, right? Don't ever forget that." He understood the boy. He too had lost purpose at the hands of another, only to find it once more with the aid of the boy.

The boy didn't respond. Instead, he closed the small distance between them and slid their mouths together. His love tasted of velvet flowers. Velvet flowers and gunpowder and drink. Soft and all chaste and innocent. The boy's lips parted slightly, erroneously and without conscious thought. Breathing each other's air. Flesh upon flesh, and a little bit of teeth. When they part, the boy's breath has been stolen.

"What did the boy taste like?" The woman asked from her place on the bed.

"Hm?"

"The boy. What did the lover taste when he kissed the boy?" She reiterated.

"I'm not sure," the man replied. "I don't think he tasted of anything."

"Huh?" She laughed at him. "Everyone tastes like something. The love was a velvet flower. What was the boy?"

The man took a moment. Then he said, "Primrose, probably."

Perhaps it is because this is the first kiss the boy has initiated, or perhaps it is the alcohol. He did not know. His breath condensed in the air, warm and visible. Usually he was not the one to breach that small threshold and meet lips with lips, but today was Christmas, and his love was by his side. Their hands were still tightly gripping that flute in unison.

The boy saw long lashes and black, envious curls, still. He was breathless, still. His heart wildly fluttering its wings within the confines of its ivory cage, still.

"Ak—"

Hands reached up to his face, tenderly brushing away the clear beads collecting in the corners of his inner canthi. They were careful and caring, cupped around his face, before they became forceful. Carved from fine marble, the hands of his lover spasmed in the air and jerked them down. A red dahlia bloomed from his cranium. Weightlessly, they fell.

Atop his lover, the boy could only cradle him in a crude imitation of his love's gentle caress. His love looked up at him with half-lidded eyes. That complexion pale and ghastly. Like a porcelain doll who'd unexpectedly, defiantly moved without permission, those lithe limbs were strewn akimbo.

"Ah-" the boy gasped, hugging the torso to his heart. The warmth was gone now, as if it was never there in the first place. The head lolled and bobbed with the rugged movement, ichor splattering all across the wooden floorboards. "Ah―"

His hands. His hands were sticky, covered in the poetry spilling out of the body in his hands in his hands in his h an d s—

The boy stood up. The body slipped from his stained hands and sprawled across the floor. The bird in his chest shot up his esophagus, clawing and tearing at his throat, fighting to be free. He wanted to scream. He wanted to scream but there was no breath, for there was no breath. The only thing the boy could see were the asphodels whose roots are entrenched in the rotting flesh of the body, holding together the last vestiges of a long-dead reminder. The boy spent another second watching the red darken and mingle with the powder in the air before he runs out of the cabin, onto the deck.

With a violent shudder, the boy doubled over the railing and dry heaved over the side. The taste of sick lined his oral cavity, yet nothing came out. His head spun, around and around. He heaved once more, stumbling from the nausea and scrambling for a hand-hold. His hands latched onto something next to him. Vaguely, he registered hands lifting him up. Shamelessly, the boy hung on to his savior, and looked up.

His lover was there, supporting him like he always has. Gentle and real and there.

The boy breathed a sigh of relief and sank into the arms of his beloved.


	2. Chapter 2

Warnings: Non-explicit sex, body horror, references to canonical character death

* * *

When the boy woke, it was dark. Moonlight streamed in from the bedside window, and not a single candle was lit. He had been brought back to the cabin and laid into bed, tucked in and warm once more. The boy shifted in the sheets, and saw his love sitting aside his bed, face peaceful in sleep. As if sensing that the boy was awake, he too stirred.

"I don't get it. Does this happen on a ship or by a pond?" the woman draped her hands around the man's neck. The man lifted a hand to her forearm and leaned into her embrace. He said, "Both."

"What? On a ship by a pond? That doesn't make any sense."

"No."

The woman splayed her hands across the man's back, feeling around the scars from a time long gone. She said, "If you're going to tell a story then tell it right. Where are they? On a ship or by a pond?"

The man gripped the flesh just above her hips and pulled her close. There was the feel of her breasts pressed against his chest, skin separated only by the flimsy shirt he had yet to shed. He replied, "Neither." The woman giggled in his arms and smashed her lips against the side of his face.

"Why am I even bothering?" she not-quite-sighed when she released her hold. "We're only here to use each other. We'll never see each other again."

"Yet you are entertaining my story."

"If it means I get what I want," she grinned at him. "Aren't we all like that? Nothing has meaning except here and now, using each other for our own agendas. Come here, boy, and kiss me already."

"What are you saying?" the boy's love asked him. He blinked at him in confusion, eyes still drooped with sleep.

"Nothing," the boy said. "Go back to sleep."

"No," his love said. "We haven't eaten yet, have we? Besides, the moon's out. Let's go eat on the quarterdeck."

The boy rubbed his eyes and got out of bed. "Sorry for ruining our plans. Didn't think I would faint like that." The other waved his apologies away. He said, "Don't ever apologize for being sick. It was my fault for giving you so much to drink, anyway."

His lover went over to the fireplace with a match, and lit a candle with a flame from the hearth. As he made to put out the embers, the boy called out, "Wait." His love paused his movements. "I want to stay here."

"Okay."

They went over to the table in the middle of the room, where his love had prepared a tray to take up to the bow. The food was displaced from the tray and replaced onto their former positions on the table, and then they sat down for the meal.

"Do you ever wonder what would have happened if we hadn't met each other?" the boy said very quietly between chewing.

"Dead."

"Besides that."

His love hesitated to take his next bite and seemed to take a moment. He said, "I don't know. I don't think I want to think about it. Could there be anything worse than both of us dead?"

The boy thought back to chairs and a clenched phone and _mother, mother, why are you crying?_

remembrance of an apartment shrouded in darkness with bills on the table and a slowly spinning fan. of a low hanging fruit he looked up upon and shook 'till it fell from the tree and cradled and waited for it to wake up

"I envy you," the boy said, eyes half closed. "For being able to not think about it if you don't want to." He didn't wait for a response before streaking across the table and slamming his lover's hand against his heart. "Do you feel this?"

_Ba-dump. Ba-dump._

"This heart of mine."

"Stop it," his love said. "Are you still drunk?" He pulled his arm back. The boy ignored him and said, "This wicked heart of mine."

"Go—"

The boy crawled atop the table and grasped the jaw of his love with two hands. He paid no mind to the food and plates he shoved his way past. "I envy you so, so much." Those grey eyes staring up at him. Unworried. Unafraid. Untouched. With another lunge, the chair tipped and they are both thrown backwards onto the floor. They are sent rolling by the fall, and in the end, the boy found himself underneath his love.

"Was it love or was it envy then?" The woman asked.

"I'd like to think it was both."

"Ha? It's either one or the other," she straddled him and laughed. "There is no in-between." The man considered that for a moment, then said, "Mayhaps so."

His love tried to roll off, but the boy held him by the shoulders. "What are you doing?" the other asked, all pain and hurt.

"Akira," the boy breathed out. "Have you ever felt guilty for having been born?"

His love didn't look him in the eye. "No. Why?"

"I am but a wooden puppet. Nothing more and nothing less," was the vague response. All wooden angles and metal screws and broken strings. "'_You have me._' isn't that what you said? Give me reason, please."

"That's not what I meant when I said that," his love said.

"I know."

"If you know then why?"

"You're the only one," Goro explained. "There's only you, and it will always be you." It was as simple as that.

"Goro," Akira's voice was uncharacteristically steely, yet stricken with emotion. "You're not a puppet whose purpose is only to dance at the whim of another."

—_hush child hush if only your father if only you were never born_

"I am. I couldn't live without my revenge, still cannot." Primrose and cypress weaved themselves throughout his ribcage.

"Don't live for me. Live for yourself."

Goro laughed and brought Akira down so that they were near flush against each other. The words that came out of his mouth were his but not his: "Who else do I have to live for but you, Akira?"

"What?" The woman lifted her head up. "Is that the name of the woman whom you're imagining me to be? Well alright, I don't mind."

"No, I'm Akira."

"Ha? I don't understand you. I thought your name was Ren?" said the woman. "Ren and Akira, what a couple they would make."

"The one I love isn't here anymore, and his name isn't Akira," said the man. The woman huffed a bit and said, "Obviously not. You wouldn't be here with me if you were."

"Would I?"

"I know men like you. All honorable and eternally faithful to their love," the woman mocked. The man, for the first time this evening, looked her directly in the eye. "Is that so bad?"

"It's pretentious. In the end, all that'll be left is hatred and nothing else."

"Are you speaking from experience?"

"Ha? Don't kid me."

"Then, do you mind me finishing this story?" the man asked. She didn't particularly care. She was here to enjoy a night of passion and nothing more, the woman told herself. She said: "If it means we can get on with this." and then she slid her head down once more.

Akira put a hand between them. "This isn't right."

"It isn't?" The marionette smiled. "What even is right and wrong anymore?" Those joints whirred indignantly. "Hey. Tell me." Primrose and cypress around a metal ribcage.

Akira stood up and took a step back. "Who are you?" he whispered. The corroded doll crawled after him and clung to his ankles. "I'm Goro," its mouth creaked open. "Who else?"

He took another step back but he slipped. The slippery red varnish on the floorboards had yet to dry. His back was against the wall now.

"Stop." Those cold hands wrapped themselves around his ankles. "Stop." Crude spindles outstretched, clamoring around his chest. Grappling his face.

"Please."

Face flattened against the partition, he squeezed his eyes shut.

"Akira?"

Slowly, ever so slowly, he peeled his eyes back. In front of him, the grody mirage bled away into the image of a kneeling pariah. Palms up, those limbs stuttered in the negative space between them, tentative and just shy of a caress.

There was no red varnish. No cypress. Lack of that screeching metal pitch. Only diamonds that couldn't be taken back — oh so glittering — laying in desolate solitude.

"I'm sorry." He declined the offer, despite the disappointment he could sense as a result. Placing a hand on the stiff wood of the floor, he pulled himself up. "I'm sorry."

Walking to the counter, Akira nursed the throbbing in his temple. "We can't stay here."

The boy's legs were like that of a newborn fawn, struggling to find balance, in his ascent. Of the two, Goro was taller, but he felt so incredibly small.

"W-Why?"

"We've been here too long," came the reply. "We're losing ourselves more and more with every visit."

Confusion. Befuddlement. Incomprehension. He heard himself ask: "What?"

"Don't you remember?" Consternation marred the features of his love. "I made a promise." There looked to be tears in his eyes. "Even if I can't see you anymore, I have to keep it."

An itch in his mind. Yes, there was a vow made in blood.

"If you were to die tomorrow — "

" — I'm fine with my life ending with you."

"But if you would live for me another day — "

"You promised you would do so too." Epiphany stuck the boy. After all, realization and remembrance always go together.

He looked up, and there Akira was, clutching his hand desperately. "I'll save you, no matter what." Came the promise.

Goro looked down at his hands, cradled so gently, and pulled them back to himself. He's touched, he truly is. He's no less touched than when Akira first made that promise to him. But even so. Even so…!

"It's been years, Akira." He doesn't quite know what he's saying, but his heart understood it to be something he'd wanted to say for a long time now. "You have to let go."

Those hands froze up, their form trembling so slightly that he almost could not see it. "W-What are you saying?" They reached for him again. "Goro —

"I'm saying that we can't do this anymore." He shuffled back. "You know it, I know it, even this _place_ knows it."

"My time's up." Voice waning, he turned his head away.

"I can't give up on you." His love's hands wavered, as stubborn as ever. The precipice of despair loomed ever closer.

"Akira…" he uncurled his fist and gripped those shoulders instead. "Please. You have to understand."

"I'm almost there. There are people out there. Extraordinarily powerful people and experts on cognitive pscience. They've been helping me. I can — "

"I'm _dead_, Akira." There's wet warmth on his cheeks. "The dead can't come back to life."

The world went still. The sound of waves lapping at the sides of the boat, the whistle of the bitter wind, the waltz of white on that cold plane — it all ceased. Without the influence of sickly delusion warping their surroundings, it seemed as if time itself had come to a halt.

All that remained were the two of them, laid bare for each to see. A distance seemed to have grown in between them.

"I'm sorry," he was all he could hear. It echoed out into the void. Tears flowed down his face. Why, why? He wanted to stay here forever. It didn't matter if they would lose themselves. The golden chalice was poisoned but he wanted to drink it anyways. Yet that knot in his heart, slowly, ever so slowly, untangled itself, and let go.

"I'm so sorry."

"Ah, I guess you're finally awake." The woman sat cross-legged on her seat at the vanity, flicking her lighter. "You've been asleep for a while. Hurry up and get out."

Face buried in the sheets, he didn't respond.

"You didn't even finish that weird story of yours before you passed out. Not that it matters." She leaned back and enjoyed her cigarette. The man said: "Do you want to hear the end?"

"Do you want to finish the story?" At his silence, she gave herself a smug little smile. "Thought not."

A stretch of time came and left yet still the man did not budge.

"Hey." She took a drag. "Seriously, get outta here. I've got work soon and I can't trust you in here without me watching you." She crushed the butt into the ashtray. He didn't move.

"Ugh, what's with you?" The woman walked over and nudged him with the ball of her foot. "Quit moping. At this rate, I won't even wait. I'll just kick you out."

She yanked back the duvet and scrunched up her nose in disgust. "You're even _crying_?"

"Here's a word of advice." She dragged him up by the arm and tossed his clothes at him. "Get over yourself. You're young; you've got your whole life ahead of you. But you're wasting it away wallowing over some lost love. God, you're pathetic. Do you think that the world would stop just because you lost one person? Stand up and get yourself dressed. I haven't fallen so low that I would be your friend."

Mutely, he complied.

"Grow up. Look around you. There's an entire world out there. But because of one person you're going to die and give up on your dreams? What an idiot you are. The ones who remember the dead and give meaning to their lives are us, the living! So live! Live for whoever it is that you can't let go of, and _get out of my apartment_."

The woman slammed the door in his face.

Outside the apartment of a woman whose name he did not remember, the man named Akira stood.

It was Christmas.

* * *

Happy Valentine's Day :D


	3. Breakdown

**Preface**

This work was started sometime in December last year and intended to be uploaded by Christmas, hence the name and setting, but I couldn't finish it in time so I settled for Valentine's Day. For the irony, of course. As a starter, I would like to credit the lovely fineinthemorning for the base premise I use here, which is derived from Phantasm. Secondly, the structuring of this work took influence from Beatingheartanthem's work December in Reverse. In a way, you can say that like one would make an art study of a more experienced artist's work, I did a study of December in Reverse. It is a shame ao3 didn't let me put more than one person in the 'inspired' section, but I highly recommend checking them out! Their work is amazing.

This style is largely experimental and helped me construct a better voice when I was stuck working on prophylaxis. Aside from Beatingheartanthem's style, I took influence from Cormac McCarthy's _The Road_ and Nisio Isin's _Monogatari Series_. _The Road_ has a heavy juxtaposition between narration and dialogue which gave an almost surreal quality to a gritty and despairing world, both of which are impressions that I wished to instill in the reader. The _Monogatari Series_ on the other hand has always inspired me in how the narration tells rather than shows yet at the same time manages to tell nothing at all to the reader. Heavy on the dialogue and body language as well as making great use of unreliable narration, it was fitting for the end, where the conversations Akira has with both Goro and the woman matter much more than wherever they were in.

* * *

**Themes and Symbols**

_Christmas_: In Japan Christmas is less a holiday focused on the family, but on romantic relationships. Make of this what you will.

_The Sea of Souls_: Here I took my primary influence from Phantasm. The Sea of Souls is non-conforming, constantly shifting and changing. Akira and Goro are in a secluded area within it, spending a Christmas together. But the Sea is based on the id of humanity, so naturally those occupying any space of it, no matter how small, will experience the landscape changing in accordance to their unconscious desires and perspectives. This also influenced the setting to be related to bodies of water.

_Flowers_: I am a fan of flower symbolism. I don't quite expect anyone to actively search up the meanings behind them, so I will explain.

Velvet Flower (Love-Lies-Bleeding): hopelessness / hopeless love. There is also a correlation with martyrdom and the sacrifice of Jesus.

Primrose: (particularly in eastern flower language) young love, inability to live without someone

Cypress: mourning, death, and despair

_The Woman_: The woman started off similar to the woman in December in Reverse: an embodiment of the reader. She probes the story and brings attention to things that add to the story. She is, admittedly, also the part of me that questions why I'm even doing this ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯. In the end, however, she's the 'punchline.' She brings the story to a close and highlights the point of the entire story. (I may have also taken a few lines from Attack on Titan, for the badassery and the applicability.) She's both me and you.

_The Hallucinations_: Hallucination is not wholly the right term, but in this context it fits well enough. Both Akira's death and the marionette are incidents that never happened, yet happened all the same. The Sea of Souls is messy like that. Taking inspiration from December in Reverse once more, they are representative of each other's greatest fears. To Goro, he fears having actually killed Akira in the interrogation room, and to Akira, he fears being Goro's sole reason for existence.

* * *

**Use of Vocabulary**

McCarthy utilized a variety of vocabulary to compliment the themes and symbols in _The Road_. The choice of word relied heavily on connotation. Here are some examples in which I tried my best to emulate that.

_dichotomy_: n. a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.

The story is centered around a division between two people, the difference in Goro's Christmas and Akira's Christmas, and the difference in perspectives across three people.

_precipice_: n. a very steep rock face or cliff, especially a tall one.

Despite the changes in points of views, they are all components in Akira's story. He starts out dangerously close to an edge of a cliff where what lies below may be despair, stagnancy, death, or all at once. At the end, Akira's position relative to this cliff is left ambiguous, but I'd like to believe that he's turning away from that deep fall.

* * *

**Last Words**

This is pretentious as hell but at this point, I kind of don't care that it is pretty pretentious anymore. I'm relatively proud of this. There are more things here that I haven't explained, but if I did, it'll ruin the fun, wouldn't it? This last bit feels very self-promoting and perhaps it is, but I originally wrote this to make myself actively consider about what I wrote as a whole (and maybe to compare myself to Beatingheartanthem's masterpiece of a fic). I hope this was a fun to read as it was fun for me to write!


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